Quentin Macfarlane (1935–2019)

The artist Quentin Macfarlane, arguably New Zealand’s greatest marine painter, died in Auckland on 5 July 2019 after a brief illness; he was 83.

Although he lived in Auckland for the past two decades, Quentin was more closely associated with Christchurch during the most active period of his career from the 1960s through the 1980s. Born in Dunedin (his (1958), was subject to widespread derision because of its radical abstraction. Macfarlane himself was a runner-up in the competition. McCahon described the exhibition of a dozen paintings from private owners as his ‘first retrospective’. Macfarlane later taught at Christchurch Teachers’ College and (from 1975) at Ilam, and was much respected.